What's Your Angle?

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INTRODUCTION

Entrepreneurs take risks. If you’ve come this far in this unit, you’ve decided that you are a risk-taker. Now it’s time to use that risk-taking side of you to be creative and come up with a marketing plan for your new business. This lesson will help you identify the key elements you’ll need to successfully market your product.

TASK

This lesson will focus on non-price competition as you try to influence consumer behavior through advertising. You will answer some “market research” questions and create an ad campaign to try to reach your core audience. You will also create a slogan, an advertisement, and a radio promotion spot to ‘sell’ the right people on your product.

PROCESS

So, you’ve got a product and a business plan. Your employees are motivated and ready to work. Now, how do you find customers and sell? You need a marketing Plan. A Marketing Plan is a written document that details the actions necessary to achieve a specified marketing objective(s). It can be for a product or service, a brand, or a product line. Today you’ll begin to think about who your customers are and what is likely to make them buy your product – and it’s not always the price!

In many markets, the price of a product is not a key to the success or failure of the companies selling it. Companies have to consider other factors. Non-price competition refers to ways of competing with other producers other than by cutting prices.

Activity One:
Work with your business partner, or alone if you are sole proprietor, to answer some important questions about the market for your business using this interactive activity.The answers to these questions will help you develop a non-price competitive edge.

Activity Two:
Now that you have thought about what might influence your customers’ behavior, take a look at some examples of existing advertisements to see what “real” businesses are doing to attract consumers. Your teacher has a collection of printed advertisements for you to look at. Try to identify what themes or strategies the advertisers were focused on – which of the important questions (who, what, when, where, why, how) did they build into the ad?

Discuss with a partner some of the advertising jingles you’ve heard. What do you think is the intended audience for each one? Why?

Activity Three:
Now that you’ve answered the questions and have some ideas about how to market your product, it’s time to create the ad campaign. Use the strategies you’ve outlined to create three promotional pieces for your product. Be sure to consider what motivates the consumers you are targeting as you create the materials. You will need to complete the following:

Create a slogan or a jingle for your product. Try to “catch” the consumer’s ear with the key phrase you think will draw consumers to your product.

Create a visual advertisement. Ask yourself: Should it be a picture of the product? Should it be a list of its advantages for your product? Should it make reference to specific seasons or events?

Create a radio spot. This is taking the visual ad and putting it into words; you’ll have to keep the ad short, or costs will rise! Try to make it 15-30 seconds at the most.

Activity Four:

Share your ideas and advertisements with the rest of your class. See if others can identify the audience you were trying to reach. Take suggestions on how you might refine your strategy.

CONCLUSION

Knowing your audience is as important to the success of your business as having a good product to sell. If you don’t consider the consumers, you won’t win them over to your product. Their wants and needs are your wants and needs.

So, you have gone the full course of an entrepreneur, except for the actual business of running a business. Do you think your plans will work? What do you think you still need to consider? Talk this unit over with your classmates. What do you think the easiest part of starting your own business is? What will be the hardest?

Take a quick in-class survey to see how many of your classmates plan to investigate going into business for themselves in the future. How many true entrepreneurs do you have in your class?

ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY

After completing activities one through four, turn in all completed work to your instructor. The marketing plans you hand in will be used for the final assessment.